


Gold Rush

by Steadfxst



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Crying, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 07:37:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14711865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steadfxst/pseuds/Steadfxst
Summary: Flynn's latest mission from Rittenhouse puts him over the edge.





	Gold Rush

Killing people makes for a lonely job. Being a double agent is exhausting. As if that wasn’t enough for the universe to throw at him, there were also the faces of his dead wife and child to contend with every night.

“California, 1848,” they tell him.

Someone holds out a file, but he ignores it. He doesn’t move. He stares out the window; it’s snowing.

“It’s the Gold Rush,” the grunt says.

His hands tighten into fists. Of course it was the gold rush. Of course Rittenhouse wanted the gold for themselves. Flynn stands and exits the room.

When he gets to the hanger where the mothership is hidden, Anthony hands him a set of period-appropriate clothing. He changes right there in the hanger, in full view of any creep who felt like watching. Flynn didn’t care. What did his nakedness matter? They didn’t see him as a human. He was a robot, an object, a _thing_ for them to program and use as they pleased.

He hands his own clothes to Anthony, who gives him an 1840’s revolver.

“Thanks, but I’ve got my own,” he says.

Anthony frowns at his use of shoulder holsters and modern glocks, but he doesn’t care. He can’t imagine what caring about anything beyond stopping Rittenhouse from the inside would even feel like. He’s been consumed by it for so long.

“Good luck,” Anthony says.

Flynn rolls his eyes and straps himself in.

* * *

Flynn lands the mothership a few miles from the mining town he’s supposed to infiltrate. The town is called Rough and Ready, and he’s feeling both. He’s not sure if it’s grief or anger that’s been giving him an itchy trigger finger lately, but he doesn’t feel like unpacking that right now. He doesn’t have time. He’s got a job to do. Get in and get out. It was easier that way, he tells himself.

He decides to head to the saloon first. It’s where all the prospectors were sure to be gathered. With alcohol free-flowing, many of them were sure to have loose lips, ready and willing to give him the exact locations of where they had been successful. Of course, Rittenhouse knew where the gold was located, but he’d need to have the deeds on him in case law enforcement showed up. Rittenhouse always liked appearing as legitimate as possible to escape notice.

The dirty men look up from their drinks and their cards when he walks in. Flynn was used to this. By comparison, he was tall, healthy, invisibly scathed, and handsome. He’d been told so enough times that he believed it. He wasn’t a vain person by nature, but if his good looks gave him a step towards his goal, he wasn’t going to complain. He heads to the bar.

“What’ll it be?” the bartender asks.

He sounds like he stepped right out of a John Wayne movie, and Flynn laughs at the absurdity of it all.

“Something funny to you?” the man asks.

Flynn shakes his head.

“Certainly not. I’ll take a whiskey neat.”

The bartender looks at him with suspicion.

“You got money?”

Flynn rolls his eyes and pulls out a wad of bank notes and smacks it onto the counter.

“This should cover a drink, yes?”

The bartender nods in disbelief.

“Coming right up.”

While Flynn waits for the man to pour his drink, a man approaches him. Right on schedule. He had been sure to flash his money where the miners would see. Mining equipment was expensive. A man with means was just as valuable as any nugget.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” the man says.

The bartender hands him his drink, and he knocks the whole thing back in one gulp. He sets the glass down and raps his knuckles on the bar.

“Another,” he says to the bartender. To the man he says, “No, I’m not. And you are?”

The man holds out his hand, which Flynn shakes. Thank god for hand sanitizer. Who knows the last time this man has bathed.

“Paul Miller, at your service. How ’bout yourself?”

“Henry Fonda,” he says.

“Well, Henry, why don’t you take your drink on over to my table, and I’ll introduce you to the boys. We sure could use a man of your means around here!”

Flynn grudgingly follows.

* * *

“Once the yellow fever spread, I knew I had to leave. And everyone was starting to talk about the West, of course. So here I am.”

The men listen intently to his whole spun tale. Folks out here were starved for entertainment, and Flynn is glad that reciting half-remembered black and white movies is all it took to get him on their good sides. Simple country folk. Flynn is surprised they haven’t been swindled fifty times over already.

“Well, we’d be happy to strike a deal with you, Mr. Fonda,” Samuel, Paul’s neighbor, says.

“I’ll have the justice of the peace draw up some papers tomorrow,” Paul says.

“Do we really need to get the law involved?” Flynn asks. “I can tell you’re all trustworthy men. I know I can take you at your word.”

Smiles and nods all around the table. It was too easy. Like taking candy from a baby. Some of them were toothless like babies at that.

“Alright, enough business!” James declares.

He rubs his hands together in a way that makes the other men laugh and wink knowingly. Flynn sighs to himself.

“What’s going on?” he asks, barely able to keep the contempt for camaraderie out of his voice.

“It’s almost nine o’clock. And nine o’clock is when Madam La Fluer opens up shop upstairs!”

More whoops and hollers from around the table. Flynn surreptitiously rubs his temple. The last thing he needed right now was a sexually transmitted disease from some under-aged whore.

As if on cue, the women step out of the rooms on the second floor and hang over the railing. All the men in the bar wolf whistle and cat call. With their big entrance complete, the women start trailing down the stairs and out amongst the tables, looking for the deepest pockets.

“Hello, Paul,” a voice behind him says.

Christ, he just wanted the damn deeds so he could shoot these bastards and leave.

“Hi there, Rosie.”

The other men chime into a chorus of, “Hi, Rosie” too.

Flynn downs another drink.

“Who’s your new friend?” Rosie asks.

She moves from behind his chair and slips an arm across his shoulders.

“This here is Henry Fonda,” Jed, who had been quiet for most of the evening, interjects.

He winks at Flynn as though he’s doing him a favor. Trapped into interacting with the woman, he turns to properly face her. Her breasts, bound by a corset, are right at eye level. He tilts his head back to look at her face.

“Please to meet you, ma’am.”

Rosie laughs.

“Ma’am? No one ’round here calls me ma’am. Boys, where did you find such a gentleman?”

Before he can think of something to say that would get him out of there, she promptly sits on his lap, wriggling with faux gaiety. Rosie leans back against his chest, making herself comfortable, but Flynn keeps his arms where they already were: one leaning on the table while the rested limply in his lap.

“I think Rosie likes you, Henry!” Samuel says.

“I’m not interested,” Flynn says. “I’m sure one of you—”

“Looks like someone’s shy,” James crows.

Flynn wishes he would die, right there on the spot. He imagines pulling out his gun right now and shooting him between the eyes.

He doesn’t.

“There ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed about, Mr. Fonda,” Rosie says.

She cups his cheek in her hand and leans in for a kiss, but Flynn immediately turns his head and shoves her off of his lap. He stands abruptly, and so do the others.

“There’s no reason to be like that, Henry.”

“Rosie is good people.”

“She’s only trying to have some fun.”

The men stare daggers at him, and Flynn sees that Rosie’s cheeks are red with embarrassment. He can tell, even under all the rogue she’s piled onto her cheeks. This wouldn’t do him any favors in obtaining the deeds tomorrow.

“I didn’t mean any harm, ma’am. I just don’t like taking my pleasures with company watching,” he says to her.

This seems to satisfy her, and she swipes at her eyes before plastering on a smile again. There’s something incredibly familiar about this process that sours Flynn’s stomach. Or maybe that was the booze.

“Well why didn’t you just say so, silly?” she asks, voice quivering. “We can go on upstairs.”

Flynn offers her his elbow, which she takes after a moment’s hesitation.

Now what the hell was he supposed to do?

* * *

Rosie’s room is sparsely furnished, Flynn notices after sitting down on her bed. There isn’t much to look at in the light of the two kerosene lamps hung up in the corners of the room. The bed is soft, however. There is a plush comforter over the fitted sheet. Probably goose down, he absently muses.

Rosie shuts and locks the door.

“We’re all alone now,” Rosie needlessly points out.

Flynn sighs. As far as he could see, he had few options. One: kill the young woman, causing the men downstairs to hear the gunshot and come running with their own guns blazing. Two: Leave the woman and ask if there was back exit he could use. (There was _always_ a back exit in places like these.) Three: Leave the woman and risk the men asking too many questions, rousing their suspicion of him and risking him never getting access to the deeds to put in Rittenhouse’s name. Four—and this was perhaps the least appealing of his options—he could sleep with the woman, have a comfortable place to spend the night, and not arouse the suspicions of the townsfolk.

And he hadn’t been with anyone since—

Rosie sits down on the bed beside him.

“Are you alright, Henry?”

She takes his hand in hers, and he recoils. He stands up and begins pacing the tiny room. It suddenly felt as though he were trapped inside a doll’s house.

“Henry, what’s wrong?”

“Shut up!” he yells. “Just stop talking in that—in that simpering tone! Just shut up!”

Rosie bursts into tears.

“Goddamn it.”

He punches the wall and leaves a dent. Rosie screams. There’s blood on his knuckles, he notices, but he doesn’t feel any pain. Nothing. He doesn’t feel anything at all except rage. He punches the wall with his other hand.

“Please let me go. Please don’t hurt me,” Rosie wails.

More blood. There’s a dull throb in his left hand. Maybe he broke something. It doesn’t matter. Rittenhouse will put him under, and he’ll be good as new in an hour. It doesn’t matter.

He paces.

“Please,” Rosie says. “I want to leave. Please. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Stop talking,” he says in a deadly whisper.

She does and tears streak the powder caked onto her face. It gives Flynn pause.

“You’re mess. Clean your face.”

He nods to the pitcher and basin on the table in the corner nearest the bed. She quickly obeys, hiccupping through a fresh sob.

“Please, Henry. Please let me go.”

He turns on her.

“And why exactly should I do that? Hmmm? Did they let my wife go? Did they let my daughter go? No. They were just targets, just like you.”

Shaken, Rosie sits down.

“Bandits?” Rosie whispers.

“That’s none of your concern.”

He resumes pacing. He flexes his fingers, unconsciously, until he notices that his pinky and ring finger on his left hand isn’t curling with his other fingers. He pauses again and inspects his hand. He pushes on the appendages, trying to force them to bend, and pain shoots up his arm.

“Fuck!”

Definitely broken.

“Mister, you need a doctor.”

“I’m fine,” he hisses.

A doctor, especially one from 1848, would, at best prescribe him laudanum, which would numb, not only the pain in his hand, but also every other human sensation for an undeterminable amount of time given that medication here wasn’t anywhere close to regulated. Besides, if he really wanted to dull his senses further, all he’d have to do is go on a few more missions for Rittenhouse.

“You’re bleeding.”

“I know.”

Flynn isn’t sure what exactly changed, but he feels the tension in the room dissipate.

“I lost my brother to bandits,” Rosie says. “A year ago. We were gonna mine together. He found some gold in the river once. The bandits must’ve seen him coming back to our shanty.”

Flynn closes his eyes and sighs.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Rosie swallows.

“Pain makes people do crazy things,” she says.

Fuck.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wad of banknotes. He peels a few hundreds off for her.

“Here.”

He holds the stack out to her, but she stares.

“Take it. You need it more than I do.”

“But we didn’t—”

“I’d say you put up with more than enough from me for one night.”

She takes the money and puts in it the drawer in the table holding the pitcher.

“What are you gonna do about your hand?”

Embrace it. Enjoy it, he thinks. At least until he got home. They didn’t like it when they had to fix up his “accidents.” He insisted he was just clumsy, and while no one was stupid enough to believe him, they also really didn’t give much of a shit as long as he could complete his tasks as assigned.

“Nothing,” he says.

He runs a hand through his hair.

“You tired, Henry?”

He laughs wetly.

“You—you could say that.”

Flynn swallows hard.

“I think I’d like that,” he hears himself say.

Rosie even helps him take off his boots.

“I’m sorry,” he says, looking up at her from her pillow.

“I know. I know I wasn’t the one you’re angry at.”

Adrenaline gone, Flynn feels himself crashing. His eyelids flutter against his cheeks. The last thing he sees before shutting his eyes is Rosie’s concerned face.

* * *

Flynn wakes up the next morning in an empty bedroom. He’s a little sore from sleeping with his shoulder holsters on. His left hand is also swollen, the skin pulled taut against his broken finger bones. He checks his pockets; the money is gone. He’s not mad. He would’ve done the same if some nutcase held him hostage in his own room too.

There’s a note by the water pitcher.

_Took your money to go back East to Ma and Pa. It’s never too late to start your life over, Mr. Fonda. Try being a little nicer next time. Maybe I would’ve taken you with me. –Rosie_

Flynn sighs.

Well, if Rosie was safely out of town, then that meant there was only one thing left to do. He loads up his guns.

It was time to get those deeds.


End file.
